


All I Want For Christmas

by HomewardDove



Series: Live From New York... [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve Eve Party, F/M, Potential Relationships, Steve is an adrenaline junkie, Tony Stark is a Match Maker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:45:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3381980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomewardDove/pseuds/HomewardDove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it's Christmastime and Steve has to find a way around Harley's hopeless romanticism just to ask her out on a date-ish. Tony and Clint brand themselves the Ninety Year Old/Superhero/Supersolider Matchmakers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Want For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Love at first sight ahead. Post Avengers - 6 months later.

The first time Steve Rogers sees her, her long dirty blonde hair is pulled up into a ponytail, she’s wearing clothes that look similar to what Pepper wears when she trains with him in the gym on his floor, and he is absolutely floored by her beauty. She’s chatting amicably with the SHIELD liason Natasha had put him in contact with when he told her he would like to go out and help with the cleanup of the city that they had both saved and helped destroy. It takes him three days of moving rubble (easy work thanks to the serum and he thinks he sees her looking at him in awe at one point although when he turns to meet her gaze she has already moved on to cleaning the next quadrant) and taking spirit lifting photos and giving autographs to fans for him to find out her name. And it only happens because of Tony Stark.

The former Stark Industries CEO flies down from the Tower one day to excitedly reveal to the Captain that he’s successfully made a modification to his suit that will cut clean up time in half (it doesn’t) and when he catches sight of Steve’s blonde crush, the Captain’s life changes forever.

“My angel in yoga pants,” Tony greets her as she approaches with a mischevious smirk. “Any idea what you want for Christmas? It’s only a few months away and I owe you something big.” Tony states, making the beautiful woman, today wearing a shirt with Tony’s image on it that he’s sure came from the man himself, shake her head and smile bashfully.

“You don’t owe me anything, Tony Stark. I was just doing my job,” she answers and Steve wonders how no one has noticed that he’s been staring at them this entire time when Tony responds to her and he gets the answer to the question that’s been bothering him for the past three days.

“I’ll just buy you something unnecessarily extravagant if you don’t answer me, Harley Edison.” Their conversation goes on for a while still, about the gift he wants to buy her and also something about a job offer he’s still waiting for her to respond to, but all Steve can think about is that he finally knows her name, and it’s the name of a motorcycle brand.

It takes him four more days after that of rubble moving before he actually gets the opportunity to speak to her longer than just a passing hello or goodbye or a ‘Captain Rogers, I think this young man/woman would like a picture with you, if you can spare a moment’. Their assigned to work on the same storefront together, painting the inside with a beautiful teal color, and Steve is grateful he can’t take the easy way out by not approaching her as he had been doing because in this situation it’d be rude not to talk to her. Their first words to each other both amaze and astonish him when he looks back on it but he realizes (now that he knows every inch of her, mind, body and soul) that there was no other way it could’ve gone.

“So, you’re kind of a showoff, aren’t you?” She asks as soon as they’re in the relative privacy of the semi-rebuilt ice cream store. Steve looks at her incredulously, at least expecting her first words to him might be a greeting or introduction of some kind and he begins to wonder if his infatuation has been misplaced when she smiles at him brightly and presses on. “I mean, moving around chunks of buildings with your bare hands. It’s like you’re unaware that women already have a hard enough time not falling in love with you at first glance.”

Steve laughs with her, a million and one responses going through his head, but he lands on something so basic and casual that he almost cringes when the words come out of his mouth. “Steve Rogers. I’m…I mean, I’m Steve Rogers. That’s my…name.” He finished lamely, waiting for the smile that sat on her face to dissipate and smiling himself when it didn’t.  

“Nice to meet you, Steve, I’m Harley Edison.”

After that meeting they manage to get paired together on every project. They get to know each other, easily and intimately. They laugh, they speak freely with each other in a way neither of them have experienced before and before they’ve even realized it, they’ve become best friends.

Steve is overjoyed that they’ve connected in this sort of way and as the months pass the nagging feeling in the back of his mind only intensifies. He watches her smile, and laugh, and share her kindness with everyone around them, all the people they’re helping every day and he can’t help himself. He wants more of her than she’s already given him. He wants more than their friendly conversations, their teasing and joking and companionship. He wants her in a very romantic way.

His hopes are dashed the first time she brings a man to the work site they are assigned at the time. The man’s name is Dash, he’s got long blonde hair that he wears pulled back in a bun, a full beard, and his closet seemingly consists of only ratty white t-shirts and the same black leather jacket. But despite his appearance, he’s a musician and Harley is, as Tony informs him later when he’s skulking around the Tower, a hopeless romantic who’ll give almost every guy a chance; or, as history has shown, every guy but the good guy a chance.

And even when Dash leaves, there’s Colin, Matthew, Kameron with a K, and Donald (the last one being an accountant both shocks and amuses everyone until they find out that he’s a weekend rider with a sweet vintage Indian), all in the span of 6 months.

Unfortunately when the opportunity arrives and Donald is gone and its almost Christmas, Christmas Eve Eve to be exact, Steve is so dejected about the connection he thought they’d had, he’s absolutely ready to thrown in the towel and stay friends with the woman who might have been the love of his life. That’s all until Tony Stark and Clint Barton make it their sole mission in life to get those two crazy kids (or 90 year old man, in Steve’s case) together. Tony is 95% sure this relationship will end as all of Harley’s relationships do, the Capsicle slowly figuring out Harley is a little too much like Snow White to function in the real world without help, and the solider will slowly extricate himself from the relationship and that’s the only reason Tony’s willing to do all of this in the first place.

Tony and Clint’s first two attempts at getting them together end in disaster. Its two days before Tony’s infamous company Christmas Eve Eve party and he’s somehow gotten Pepper to agree to corral Harley into going cake tasting them while sneakily inviting the Captain as well, citing a new century experience as the reason the man has to come. It looks like a blatant and mostly obvious attempt at a double date. It only lasts a maximum of thirty minutes before Harley gets a page from the clinic she is now only working at part time as well as being the part time Head of Philanthropic Ventures at Stark Industries, finally taking the position when money starts to get tight and she wants to help pay off her brother’s college loans. So then Harley’s gone and it’s only Pepper, Tony and Steve, until Pepper gets a work call and then it just looks like Captain America and Iron Man are getting married and are trying to pick out a wedding cake, or at least, that’s what the tabloids that have their picture are claiming.

The second attempt is actually the day of the party. They try to push the two together by calling on them to help decorate claiming the people who were hired to be doing it have all mysteriously come down with the flu (although in reality Tony’s just paid them twice over to stay away from the Tower for the day, the guy has much too much money). But that ends quickly as well when they get an Assemble call and Tony calls for them all to answer it because “nothing’s getting in the way of me and my special Christmas Eve Eve buzzed Pepper Pickle Tickle”.

And so it seems like every time Steve and Harley attempt to hang out outside of volunteer work or bumping into each other at the Tower the more time they both start to spend there, it ends in disaster. But as it turns out, they don’t need any help admitting their feelings for each other, unless you can’t a few glasses of an 18-year old Scotch and some of Thor’s Asgardian mead as help.

Its 2 AM on Christmas Eve Eve after a long night of schmoozing and swindling money out of everyone they could for their rebuilding efforts at the party (Christmas always made guilty rich people feel a lot guiltier about being rich), Harley ending up decorating the entire party with only Pepper’s help, and the rest of the Avengers are dead beat after fighting a horde of robotic wasps that had originally been the science project of a teen genius and ended up becoming sentient enough to try and take over City Hall to be their hive. Harley and Steve had been a major focus during the evening. Steve always was as Captain America and Harley as the face of Stark Industries charitable ventures after the Battle of New York. It had been a long night made even longer by Tony’s incessant poking for them to dance together, take a picture together, go into a dark coat closet for a coat that he wasn’t even sure he had actually coat checked. Until finally they’d been able to make their escape thanks to some quick thinking on Harley’s part and a neat little smoke bomb Clint had helped her make out of a napkin some of that 18-year old Scotch Harley had swiped and a lock of her hair (and probably something else but she felt cooler thinking of Clint as some sort of assassin MacGyver type).

So they found themselves on top of Stark Tower, now aptly named Avengers Tower, at the rooftop bar drowning their annoyances about their professional lives, with Scotch for Harley and Asgardian mead for Steve, and playing their what had to be thousandth game of this or that.

“Pizza or chocolate covered strawberries?”

“First of all, how dare you. And second of all, pizza. Chocolate covered strawberries are only for special occasions, pizza, you can eat pizza every day for every meal. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. Pizza is a perfectly acceptable meal for each one of those instances, chocolate covered strawberries would just be gratuitous.”

“You had chocolate covered strawberries and a slurpie for breakfast just yesterday.”

“Touché,” Harley answered, pausing to down the rest of the Scotch in her glass and then pushing it away, deciding she had consumed just enough drinks that she would soon be bordering the line between wanting to pass out and wanting to lick Steve from jawline to throat. She pushed the thought so far back in her mind just slow enough that it gave her a horrible idea for a this or that question that was out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

“Cheese or oral sex?”

There was a long pause, Steve’s brain was basically frozen after hearing the words oral sex come out of Harley’s mouth and Harley had thrown a hand over said mouth and her eyes closed shut as she regretted the words with every bit of her being.

“Oral sex.”

Harley’s eyes popped open in surprise and almost squealed when she realized Steve had abandoned his barstool and stood so that he was standing directly to her right and so close that she could see vividly the way his blue/green eyes were shining as he looked at her.

“Sorry, that was a really personal question, you didn’t have to answer it.” Harley apologized, keeping her voice low enough not to break the spell they had created around them.

“Harley…I just…I want to know everything about you. And I want you to know everything about me. Even that I prefer oral sex over cheese,” Steve paused while Harley laughed and his heart leapt in his chest as he watched her face light up with amusement. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you this since the moment I first saw you, since we started to get to know each other, since Tony and Clint started trying to push us together.”

“What’s that?” Harley whispered, spinning her body around in her chair so that she was facing Steve now, settling one arm on the forearm that was resting on the back of her chair and the other clutching the fabric of her dress where it sat on her left thigh.

“I really like you, more than I’ve liked anyone in about 75 years,” He paused for laughter again, reminding himself not to chicken out even as he watched Harley giggle. “You’re someone I could see a future with in a time where I’m really not sure what my future holds. I like you…and I’d really like to take you out sometime, if you would let me.”

Harley stared at Steve incredulously for a short while before she realized she should probably answer him so that he wouldn’t think she didn’t want to go out with him, because she did. She totally and completely did, God did she. She’d dated a lot of guys since she’d met Steve, sure, but only because she never thought in a million years that he would be interested in her and being with someone else, anyone else, was easier than being alone, as awful as that sounded.

“Yes, yes, yes, I’d love to go out with you. God, did that sound too eager or desperate? I am neither of those things I assure you.” Harley rambled on, her hand clenching and unclenching on Steve’s forearm unconsciously until he moved his arm so that their hands lined up and they interlocked fingers, looking first at their hands together and then locking eyes. Blue on blue/green eyes, skin on skin, and then lips on lips.

They tasted each other slowly, intimately, tentatively at first, and then Steve reached out with his tongue gently running it along the seam of Harley’s lips and she was gone. She was lost to the taste, touch and smell of him. She’d dreamt about kissing him for so long she wasn’t sure if she was actually dreaming or not. Because everything she’d dreamt didn’t possibly compare to what was happening to her at this moment, and because it was so much better, she couldn’t possibly believe that it actually was real life.

It could have been minutes, or hours or days before they finally broke apart for all Harley knew. All she knew was that she had never been kissed like that before, she’d never been looked at like Steve was looking at her now, like she was the most important person on the entire Earth, she’d never felt the way she felt right now and she never wanted that to end.

-

It was Christmas Eve and Harley was floating on what she felt was probably as close to Cloud 9 as she would ever get. She’d met her parents and her siblings that morning at the airport, had a joyous reunion in the middle of JFK, and now she was helping her mother prepare Christmas Eve dinner before they had to set off for Christmas service at the non-denominational Christian church that Harley had found within 3 weeks of moving to New York from California.

“H, could you give me a hand with the ham, babe?” Harley’s mother, Andrea, asked as she threw her dark brown hair over her shoulder while tossing a pair of oven mitts at her only daughter.

“Why can’t one of the boys help you with the ham?” Harley asked, staring at her phone longingly and wondering why Steve had suddenly stopped responding in their conversation a little over an hour ago. She only looked up when one of the oven mitts that had previously been thrown at her hit her over the head. “Hey!”

“Your father and your brothers are watching their Boys, this is my time to spend with my only daughter that lives a whole country away from me, while they’re otherwise occupied. Now come help me, _mija_ ,” the older woman of Mexican descent pulled her daughter by the arm over to where her ham was waiting to be pulled out and basted again. “So who are you waiting on, staring at that phone all day, H?”

Harley sighed, giving her mother a small smile and trying to keep the blush from her cheeks. “Just a guy I met, at a work thing, we’re supposed to go out sometime after the holidays…” She paused after they lifted the pan holding the ham onto her stove top so that her mom could work her magic, they locked eyes once the work was done and Harley was very hard pressed to keep the blush off her face this time. “I really like him, Mom,” 

“That’s so great, honey,” Andrea responded, pulling her daughter into a hug, rubbing her hands up and down Harley’s back. She opened her mouth to further question her daughter about this guy when a loud shout came from the living room where Harley’s father, Victor, and her three brothers were all supposed to be enjoying the annual Cowboys Thanksgiving day football game. The two women rushed towards the living room and Harley stopped dead in her tracks at the doorway that separated that room and the kitchen when she saw what was interrupting the transmission of the football game.

“ _We’ll stay with you live as we watch this story develop. But at the moment it seems like these gunmen have a small group of hostages under their control, the authorities are right outside but have not made any movements for fear of heightening the dangers. We’ve seen-wait, just wait-the Avengers are here. They have a small jet hovering right next to our chopper and it looks like, yes, that’s Captain America, he’s just opened the door of the jet, it looks like he’s assessing the situation, and there he goes, he’s just jumped out of the jet, they’re firing at him but it looks like he’s handling it pretty well. He’s pinned down, he’s been pinned down, he’s hiding behind his shield. The gunmen have left the hostages behind, they’re being helped to another area but it looks like Captain America might be in some trouble-“_

That was all Harley heard as she flew down the hallway towards her bathroom, unloading the quick lunch she’d had into the toilet. Just yesterday she’d been in his company, she’d been in his arms, she’d been kissing him just yesterday. And today, today he was jumping out of planes and putting his life on the line. To save people, the most admirable reason she could think of for jumping out of a plane and putting his life on the line, and damn him for it because it only made her hate him and fall a little more in… _like_ , with him all at the same time.

“H! H! Are you alright?” Her oldest brother, Jude, came rushing in the bathroom, his large, linebackers body looking ridiculously large in her small apartment’s, small bathroom. Jude had always been the brother she was closest to, even if she was closer in age to Nathanael or Thomas, Jude had always been the most comfortable to talk to, the easiest to get along with. Even if he’d been a fullback in high school and college, and possibly the most violent player on the field, he was also the most sensitive and compassionate man she’d ever met.

“No, no I’m not alright.” Harley answered back honestly, standing up so that she could wash her mouth out and brush her teeth, Jude helping by pulling her hair back and starting to comb it into a braid. He’d always been good at soothing her; he soothed her after she came second in her surfing competitions, when her first boyfriend ditched her for someone else at their first homecoming, when she’d been absolutely terrified to make the decision to move all the way across the country. He’d also learned how to braid her hair because their mother was always at the hospital, her job as neurosurgeon kept her pretty busy, and their dad was a fulltime business owner who worked on average a 60 hour work week and she had never gotten over how amazing it was for a brother to do that.

“Does it have anything to do with that horrible street food we ate earlier or what we just saw on the news?” Jude asked and Harley wanted to shake her head at how perceptive he was, while simultaneously wanting to wring his throat for being so perceptive.

“It has to do with him…him…Captain America. I, I know him, he’s…we’re supposed to have…I invited him over for Christmas dinner. It was gonna be a surprise. You know how much Dad and the boys worship the ground he walks on. And he’s…he just jumped out of an airplane, but last night we were, we were just kissing and today he’s jumping out of a plane and getting shot at.” Harley breathed deeply so as to hold back the tears she was about to let loose.

“Wait a second, you’re dating Captain America?” Jude asked, turning his sister around so fast right after she had just spit her toothpaste that she almost hit him with some residue.

“We just watched him hurl himself into danger on the TV and that’s seriously your first reaction?” Harley, kept her voice down as she stared incredulously at her older brother, until her eyes widened and then she tried to make a move towards the door.

“H, wait,” Jude grabbed her arm and pulled her into a hug, “Firefight ended a minute before I came in here. Your boy is fine, kicked some major ass. He’s probably posing for pictures, kissing babies and signing autographs as we speak. He’s alright, H.” Jude squeezed his little sister just a little tighter when he felt her let out a very deep sigh and wrap her arms around him, squeezing him tightly in response. “Are you gonna be alright?”

“Yeah, yeah I’ll be alright.” Harley paused for just a second, letting the news she’d just received sink in before pulling out of the hug to wipe her eyes and compose herself. “But he won’t be, once I get my hands on him.”

-

_Ding Dong_

“It’s the doorbell! We’ll get it, H!” Harley’s twin brothers,  Nathanael and Thomas, yelled from the living room while Harley was helping her mother with the mashed potatoes for dinner in the kitchen. She hadn’t heard from Steve since last night (well that wasn’t entirely true, she’d gotten a text message from him right around midnight that said something like _Thinking about you. Can’t wait for dinner tomorrow. Good night._ , which she definitely hadn’t responded to), so she hadn’t been quite sure exactly when he would show up for dinner, only that he would be there.

“No! No! I’ll get it! Don’t answer it, I’ll get it!” Harley shouted back, passing off the potatoes masher to her mother and then sprinting to the door, forgetful of the _Kiss the Cook_ apron she was wearing or that she hadn’t yet put on her makeup or done her hair. “Get out of the way, turds!” She pushed her older brothers out of the way and making it to the door just in time to open the door and walk out of it before closing the door behind her and rounding around on the superhero that was standing on her doorstep with a bottle of what was sure to be really great wine, a vase full of her favorite yellow lilies and another bushel of yellow roses, her mother’s favorite flower, and he looked all sorts of yummy.

“Hi,” Steve greeted shortly, setting all the things he had in his hand down on the patio table that was right out front of her small apartment building that only housed one other apartment which had its own entrance on the other side of their building, as far as she could tell no one had lived there while she had been living there. Harley opened her mouth to lay into the blonde super soldier in front of her but instead she was caught off guard when he reached forward and tugged her to him by the waist and set a forceful kiss on her lips, just a quick one, but full of feeling and then she was being released and definitely felt a little lightheaded while she caught her balance.

“I am so, so mad at you right now,” Harley whispered, bringing her finger tips up to her mouth and trying to memorize the sensation.

“Sorry, it’s just…I was just following the instructions,” Steve pointed towards her apron, smiling, beautifully and then losing his smile slowly when he saw Harley was not smiling at all. “Uh, oh, I think I’m really in trouble here.”

“You are. You are in so, so much trouble!” Harley took a breath, about to lay into him in all the way she had envisioned last night, but never got the chance, once again, because her front door opened again and they were greeted by the entirety of her family, all staring at the couple outside with surprised eyes and open mouths.

“Holy shit,” Thomas blurted, flinching even before his mother went to hit him over the head with her hand.

“Steve, my family. Family, Steve,” Harley made the introductions quickly, then reached out and promptly shut the door on her family’s faces, rounding back on Steve with one finger already wagging in his face. “I am not going to date you.”

“You’re not going to date me?” Steve asked, astonishingly, his face losing any of the joy it had previously held.

“No, I’m going to date you. God, I like you Steve. I like you a lot more than I should. I like you and I hate you already because I watched you yesterday on the news and it almost…” Harley paused, tears were quickly filling her eyes, but she sniffed to hold them back and push on. “So no, no I’m not going to date you until you come to terms with the fact that…until you realize that just because you haven’t died yet doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“C’mon Steve, you’re a smart guy. But if you need it in plain English, here it is. The day before yesterday you asked me out on a date and told me I was someone you could see a future with. The very next day you jumped out of an airplane with no parachute and into the middle of a firefight with nothing but your shield. I don’t care what the hell it’s made out of. Shield vs a whole bunch of bad guys pointing guns at you, guns win. Almost every time.”

“But they didn’t win.”

“But they should have.”  Harley looked up into Steve’s bright blue eyes and steeled herself for her next words. “You are more than welcome to stay for dinner, now that my family’s seen you they’re not gonna let you go until you do the whole song and dance anyways.” Steve nodded his head in understanding, even though he wasn’t sure he understood at all. “I will be your friend, I will be your friend but I can’t be anything else because I don’t know if I can let myself care about you and watch you do stuff like that. I will be the best friend you’ve ever had, but I can’t be any more.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Harley questioned, quirking her head inquisitively.

“Okay, may I come in for dinner, then?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Listen, my job is my job, Harley. And I certainly respect that you can admit that you’re not…that it’s too much for you. I’m not ignorant or naïve about what I do, and I’m certainly not going to stop doing that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've got so many ideas for this series, which includes quite a few original female characters, and I definitely want to focus on that. But I also have this smutty Steve/Darcy/Bucky series of ideas in my head that are begging to get out. Please leave a comment/kudos and subscribe. Let me know what you'd be interested in reading about!


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